UDI reference implementation Open Sourced

Project UDI - May 9, 2001 - Members of Project UDI today announced the
open source release of the UDI (Uniform Driver Interface) reference
implementation at http://projectudi.sourceforge.net. This first public
release of UDI code is the product of a multi-company development
effort designed to provide device driver portability for existing and
future system configurations. Based on the Version 1.0.1 UDI
specification, the code base reflects the culmination of approximately
three years of development and testing to validate the specification on
a variety of operating systems and using a variety of device drivers.
The latest UDI specification as well as other information about Project
UDI is available from http://www.project-udi.org.
Released under a BSD-style open source license, the UDI reference
implementation is available for all interested parties to download,
examine, use, or modify for their purposes. Project UDI is also
interested in promoting the participation of OS vendors, independent
hardware vendors (IHVs), driver developers, or other parties interested
in the development or porting of UDI to new platforms or adding
additional driver support. Information on joining the Project UDI open
source effort can be found at http://projectudi.sourceforge.net or at
the Project UDI web site at http://www.project-udi.org. Current efforts
are underway in the areas of network protocol support, USB, Infiniband,
and others.

With the open sourcing of this reference code, Project UDI is providing
a functional and portable base upon which both system and I/O vendors
may reliably implement high performance, portable device drivers and
device driver support. The code release includes functioning UDI
reference environment implementations for the SCO UnixWare, SCO
OpenServer, Linux, and Sun Solaris operating systems; functioning UDI
driver implementations for NIC and HBA drivers; and various tools and
test fixtures to assist UDI developers.

"This is an important milestone in regards to Project UDI. While the
specifications have been openly published, this is the first time the
source code to working UDI implementations has been made available for
anyone to examine, use, or port to other platforms," said Kurt
Gollhardt, chairman of Project UDI. "Driver developers can use the
released code to develop portable drivers, and OS vendors can freely
take the UDI environments already released in source form and port them
to their OSes to add UDI support."

According to Chris Herzog, president of Software Technologies Group,
Inc., the developers of the UDI Linux implementation, "This is a major
UDI milestone in that it demonstrates the key point of openness that
has been part of Project UDI from the beginning. It provides OS
vendors, IHVs, and driver developers a portable, functional base to
develop on and start to reap the benefits of UDI. UDI is open to all
interested parties and this is just one way the contributors to Project
UDI are backing up that statement of openness of both the specification
and the functional code that implements it."

By developing to a single device driver interface, companies can
realize significant savings in device driver development and testing
costs. Time-to-market of new devices is also improved, and
manufacturers can allocate development resources to improving device
performance, features, functionality, and quality.

Project UDI is a multi-company open development group dedicated to
developing standardized device driver interfaces for the computer I/O
technologies of today and tomorrow. More information on Project UDI may
be found at http://www.project-udi.org or by contacting one of the
member companies listed below.